Sue was, until Autumn 2018, EVP Sustainable Business and Communications at Unilever. She now runs her own business, as an advisor on sustainability strategy for companies wishing to step change their strategy and commitment to sustainability. Current and recent clients include Mars; Primark; Lloyds Bank; Nat West Banking Group; Coutts; Natura; Danone; RHS; Heineken; and O2. Both Primark and the RHS launched ambitious sustainability plans in September 2021 based on work led by Sue.
Sue complements her paid client work by working with a range of sustainability focussed organisations on a pro-bono basis, and aims to donate 5% of her fee income each year to charity. In 2021 she will have donated around 20%.
Sue is the Chair of the independent not for profit organisation, Blueprint for Better Business. She is on the Board of the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, is a Fellow at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, tutoring regularly on their senior executive education programmes. She is a Visiting Fellow at Cranfield School of Business Management, and a Fellow of the RSA. In November 2020 Forbes magazine placed Sue 13th in a list of the top 100 women sustainability influencers worldwide.

At Unilever, Sue was responsible for the company’s USLP (its sustainability plan), with 72 quantified time bound targets. In this role, she defined the consumer case for sustainability, which when baked into the company’s leading brands led to over 60% superior growth rates compared with the overall brand portfolio. Sue was also part of the 4-person team, led by the CEO, that repelled the hostile takeover bid by Kraft Heinz.

Before joining Unilever, Sue was a Director General in the Department of Work and Pensions, as head of Customer Strategy and Communications, tackling two defining social issues – minimising long term unemployment during the global recession, and avoiding pensioner poverty.
Sue has had two spells in Government, and a 15-year spell in between working in marketing, advertising agencies and public affairs.
Sue recently renovated an old farmhouse, which included stripping out the oil-fired heating system and replacing it with an air source heat pump and fully insulated outside walls, floors and attic. Apart from needing to rob a bank for the capital cost, she’s delighted with the result, and her home now has a zero carbon footprint.

You may want to go deeper into a topic for your audience. The keynote topics can be tailored and developed to suit your audience needs, be it a 90 minute Masterclass , half-day, full-day workshop or a full online or face to face programme we can help. Please contact one of our expert team to discuss.

How to create sustainability strategies that align with business objectives
How to get ahead on sustainability
What businesses can do  now  to be more sustainable

Before joining Unilever, Sue was a Director General in the Department of Work and Pensions, as head of Customer Strategy and Communications, tackling two defining social issues – minimising long term unemployment during the global recession, and avoiding pensioner poverty.
Sue has had two spells in Government, and a 15-year spell in between working in marketing, advertising agencies and public affairs.
Sue recently renovated an old farmhouse, which included stripping out the oil-fired heating system and replacing it with an air source heat pump and fully insulated outside walls, floors and attic. Apart from needing to rob a bank for the capital cost, she’s delighted with the result, and her home now has a zero carbon footprint.

Margaret Heffernan is a charismatic and authoritative speaker who takes little at face value and regularly challenges received wisdom. With an unerring ability to highlight the talent that often lies underutilised in organisations, this five-time CEO and six-time author consistently questions common business practices in ways and from angles that never fail to surprise. Her aim? To show organisations how to ‘get out of their own way’ and release the talent already in their ranks.
Originally a producer for the BBC, Margaret moved to the US in the 1980s where she became a renowned media executive through her work at The Learning Company, Standard & Poor’s, and others. To date she has written six books.
Her latest, Uncharted: How to Map the Future Together, invites us to adapt to a world in which uncertainty is now the default rather than the exception. It could not be more timely as Covid19, Brexit, AI and other volatile forces bring unprecedented disruption to lives and businesses across the globe.

Among her other roles, Margaret is a Professor of Practice at the University of Bath, Lead Faculty for the Forward Institute’s Responsible Leadership Programme and, through Merryck & Co., she mentors CEOs and senior executives of major global organizations. She also writes for the Financial Times and Huffington Post.
She was shortlisted for a Thinkers50 Strategy Thinking Award in September 2021.

Related Speakers

Margaret Heffernan Zoë Arden Marga Hoek Graeme Codrington